Various - Kulør 001
Earlier this year, RA's Kit Macdonald joined Frans Ibon and Alexander Salomonsen on a train headed from Copenhagen to Malmö in Sweden, where they'd been booked for a DJ gig. Macdonald was in town writing a piece about Copenhagen's flourishing fast techno scene, and, as leading artists in the city, Ibon and Salomonsen explained how the music might have developed its character. "People were tired of slow, big-room techno," Ibon said. "I think another part of why a fast tempo works here is that a lot of us are children of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Trance was massive in Denmark then, so we all grew up hearing music of that speed..."

Trance's influence on Copenhagen techno is particularly obvious on the tracks that Salomonsen (AKA Repro) and Ibon contribute to Kulør 001, the first release on a new label from that scene's best-known DJ, Courtesy. The way these producers and their peers play with the genre is part of why the Danish capital is now home to some of the freshest techno out there.

These artists' method is often an exploration of opposites, and for this trance's rich melodies are an ideal tool. As rough and tough as the beats get, they're often paired with smooth and evocative synths. Without the melodies, Repro's "Det Går Dårligt" could be one of those percussive techno jams that were popular 20 years ago; with them, the track works as both a rump-shaker and a tear-jerker. Schacke blends dark and light on "Automated Lover." A crunchy breakbeat is made a little friendlier by a dazzling melody, making for one of the compilation's strongest tracks. Rune Bagge's "This Could Be Us" uses similar themes on a four-on-the-floor template and is just as good.

Some of the artists here boldly contribute straight trance tracks. At a time when artists ranging from Lorenzo Senni to Nina Kraviz have reintroduced trance into the club music conversation, this isn't as daring as it would have seemed a couple years ago, but it's still striking. You could imagine IBON's "Forest Car" and "No Sleep" and Funeral Future's "Heute Nicht" making glowsticks weave at Gatecrasher circa 2000. But, wisely, we don't get the excessive breakdowns and drum rolls that defined the trance of that era.

Macdonald's piece mentioned that the raves in Copenhagen tend to be less serious than the average techno event, something that could stem from the speed of the music (we get close to 150 BPM here), but that's just a theory. To be sure, nothing screams "fun" in Sugar's "Same But Different," with its piercing synths, or "Designer Of Worlds," with its wonky LFOs. But maybe this is symbolic of the perspective from which this scene approaches techno generally. Kulør 001 highlights a group of artists who were inspired by their history and environment and did things a little differently. If you're new to this scene, start here.